23 
ber the time, when new colonies of monkeys set- 
tled themselves in such and such a valley. Did 
the tradition of the five ages contain a trait of 
the history of animals ? Could it designate a 
year, in which hurricanes, and earthquakes 
caused by volcanoes, induced the monkeys to 
make incursions into the mountains of Anahuac ? 
In this cycle of tempests, two men only survived 
the catastrophe, by fleeing to a cavern, as at the 
end of the preceding age. 
Fourth cycle. The age of water, Atonatiuh, 
the duration of which is 10 x 400+8=4008 years. 
A great inundation, which began the year ce calli^ 
the day 4 water ( nahui destroyed mankind. 
This is the last of the great revolutions, which 
the world has undergone. Men were transformed 
into fish, except one man and one woman, who 
saved themselves in the trunk of an ahahuite^ or 
cupressus disticha. The drawing represents the 
goddess of water, called 3Iatlalcuejey or Chat- 
chiuhcueje, and considered as the companion of 
Tlaloc, descending towards the earth. Coxcox, 
the Noah of the Mexicans, and his wife Xochi- 
quetzal, are seated in a trunk of a tree covered 
with leaves, and floating amidst the waters. 
These four ages, which are also designated 
under the name of suns^ contain together eigh- 
teen thousand and twenty-eight years ; that is 
to say, six thousand years more than the four 
